Set Me Free
by Amara the Warrior
Summary: Quistis lives with a horrible disease and she fears that she'll lose her job. Each day she keeps getting sicker and sicker. She has one case she desperately wants to take, involving a missing girl and a ransom. And she has to partner with the man that broke her heart. Together they find out the girl isn't who she appears to be...


**Silence**

_A/N: This is a crime story. And somewhat of an AU! I write short chapters so just a warning to those who enjoy the longer chapters. And this story is somewhat based on my experiences with Lupus. But I am not a detective and my mother is not on drugs. I've experienced Lupus-like symptoms for years so I decided to write a story for some friends I made online (who I became really close to) who also have the disease. I haven't been diagnosed yet. But it helps me to write as an escape. Well that my note…enjoy the reading._

I woke up in pain as usual. My joints and lungs were hurting. Pleurisy and Arthritis; what an excellent combination! The room was spinning around me, yet I was lying down. I didn't understand this; I didn't understand how it had gotten to this point. I was so healthy before!

I had been diagnosed with Lupus when I was 18 years old. I was a detective. I needed a doctor's letter so I could still become a police officer at the age of 21. It was all I really wanted to do. I did an extraordinary job.

_Until my Lupus got worse._

Then suddenly I was taking more sick days and suddenly I was stuck in bed more. I had mild Lupus, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt! Mild Lupus meant mild involvement of the body. Only the joints, skin, and lungs (mildly) were involved.

The people at the police station began to get worried. They began to doubt me and my measures. They began to think that I couldn't do the job! I started falling down on the job. Being unable to pull the trigger of a gun! I was turning into a cripple.

I was starting to believe them; I was starting to think that they were right. Maybe I just was too sick to do my job? I was always in bed as soon as I got home from work.

What kind of life was that?!

I really hated my life. I wanted something better for myself. I wanted something more. Lupus was robbing me of my life. It was robbing me of my simplest pleasures. For that I really did hate it. I wanted my old life back; where I was swimming, and going out every night!

I was on so many medications. I was on Arava, Plaquinel, Indocin, and many herbal supplements to control the inflammation inside my body. I didn't like to complain because I knew that so many other people had it so much worse than I did.

My name was Quistis. I was only 26 years old. Too young to deal with all of this! I graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice from a rather small college. I decided to major in that because I wanted some adventure in mystery in my life.

_The problem was...I didn't really know that I was sick. _

I was sick for a long time, but I didn't know it. I was clueless! I thought that those symptoms happened to everyone! I didn't realize that losing hair, being sensitive to the sun, and getting a butterfly rash meant that there was something really wrong with my body! I was clueless...

I went through many tests to get to my diagnosis. Many of them were negative. That was very annoying. The ANA was negative. Most Lupus patients had a positive ANA. Actually almost all Lupus patients had a positive ANA.

All the other antibodies didn't show up. My doctor started to disbelieve me. He kept telling me the odds of me having Lupus with negative blood tests. I wanted to slap him and tell him that I was in _pain _and that I didn't care about the odds... I just wanted to feel better.

Lupus ran in my family history. My mom had it. She suffered a lot. She too had mild Lupus. But she dealt with it differently than I did. She turned to drugs. I would never forgive her for that.

How could a person do that to themselves? And for years?! It made me so mad that I could hardly stand it. I never spoke to her when she got high. I just couldn't! She broke my heart...

I wanted a normal mom; why didn't I get that?

I decided that it was time to get out of bed so I did. I looked at my watch. It was 4:30 P.M...on a Saturday. I had gotten nothing done but napping!

I figured I would fix up my hair since it probably looked like a rat's nest by now.

I went into the bathroom. I opened the door with my arthritic hands. Carefully I turned on the lights. I had to be careful because of the faulty light switch. Living in an apartment sometimes was very inconvenient.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I started brushing my long blonde hair. My icy blue eyes stared back at me in the mirror.

I guessed that I was beautiful, but with everything that was happening to me, sometimes I just didn't feel like it. The rash was mild...and most of the time it wasn't noticeable...but with the sickly look to my features I felt like I was dying all the time.

Most people would call that dramatic, but that's just how I felt. I felt sickly and weak; it wasn't a good feeling.

I pulled my long hair back into a ponytail. I grabbed onto the counter to steady myself. Sleeping too long had made me very weak. Still, I was determined to carry on.

After spending some time in the bathroom I decided to turn on the TV. I had nothing better to do on a Saturday. I was too unwell to go out and do anything and I wanted to watch some shows.

First I turned on the news. At first it was just typical stuff: stabbings, muggings, etc. Then something came on that really perked my interest. A little girl named Mae went missing. I knew very well that a lot of kids went missing all the time. We always got reports of missing kids and such.

_But this one was different. _

The girl had no parents, which I thought was strange. Usually the children who went missing had parents and such. It was a mystery as to who was taking care of the child!

Then the caption came up. The grandmother was taking care of the girl.

The grandmother? I could only imagine what kind of burden it must have been to raise a child at such an old age. The grandmother was 80 years old. That was pretty old in my opinion.

The girl went missing yesterday. The poor grandmother was worried sick. Whoever they wanted money for the ransom.

But why? I thought it was strange. The girl was poor. She lived in the worst part of town and as far as I could tell from the newscast...had no friends. Why would they want a ransom from a poor, contactless girl?

It made no sense.

The plot of this kidnapping had started to become interesting. And suddenly sick or not, I wanted to be a part of it! I decided to go down to the station and ask to take the case.

I looked around my cluttered apartment with its wooden walls and thought to myself "I need to get out of here and prove to people that I can do this..." More than anything I needed to prove to myself that I could do it.

At the station everyone stared at me. I knew why they were staring. I probably looked sickly again. Of course most of the time I didn't even _look _sick so most people didn't believe me when I said I was sick. It was the curse of carrying the "Wolf" disease.

I walked along until I came to the front desk. "Excuse me," I asked. "Is Sargent Grosser here?"

The secretary looked at my tired face with faked compassion. She had seen me before and had taken my "sick day" calls. I doubted she really wanted to be talking to me right now.

"He'll be right out."

She made a call to him and let him know that I was there. I waited for about five minutes until he came to see me. He was a tall man, about 6'7. He was kind and forgiving of me. He smiled when he saw me.

"Quistis," he smiled. "How are you feeling today?"

I sighed. "Fine; I just wanted to talk to you about something."

He nodded. "Let's go into my office."

I followed him into his office, which was about as cluttered and disorganized as my apartment. We sat down and he looked into my eyes. "What do you want to talk about?" he asked me.

"You remember that missing person's case on the TV?" I asked, trying to be as direct as possible.

"You remember that little girl who went missing. Well there is now a ransom for her!"

"I know," Sargent Grosser answered, a frown forming on his face. "100,000 dollars is their price. The grandmother can barely afford rent..."

"I want on that case," I just blurted out what I wanted, not caring if I sounded impulsive or not.

His frown grew larger. I could tell he wasn't happy. I just wanted to do one more case before I being demoted to desk work, which I _knew_ was going to happen.

"Quistis," he began. "You have a condition that prevents you from being an effective detective."

I didn't like the sound of this.

"Yes, I admit you have the brains to figure all of this out. But your physical condition makes it hard for you to be agile enough to get the job done."

"Give me a chance," I was starting to beg. "I don't want to have to do desk work!"

He shook his head. "Not alone. You can't possibly do this alone. I'm going to have to give you a partner...I'm sorry."

I _hated _partners. Who was it going to be this time?! I hated them because I just wanted to work alone for once…I used to love partners but lately I had been getting annoyed by them.

"Who is it this time?" I asked in a cranky tone.

"I think you know him," he smiled. "His name is Seifer Almasy. He's a very competent detective."

My heart almost stopped. Of course I knew him; I dated him! He broke my heart of course and I never wanted to talk to him ever again. Now he was going to be my partner!?

I couldn't believe it.

I left Grosser's office in a horrible mood.

The one thing going through my mind was that I was going to have to work with the man that broke my heart. I didn't think that I could do that.

I went to the secretary to get his address. I had forgotten where he lived. Of course I did. The brain fog made sure of that. But I always accommodated my illness with my work to make sure I succeeded.

She gave me his address and I looked at it. It was in a deserted part of town. What was he hiding?

I was going to find out when I confronted him! But I wasn't doing it for him. I was doing it for the little girl who was lost. I was doing it for the grandmother. And I was doing it for my own sanity.

_I would succeed! _


End file.
